Help with Criminal Justice

Contributors: Stuart Henry

Edited by: J. Mitchell Miller

Book Title: 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook

Chapter Title: "Social Construction of Crime"

Pub. Date: 2009

Access Date: May 28, 2017

Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.

City: Thousand Oaks

Print ISBN: 9781412960199

Online ISBN: 9781412971997

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412971997.n34

Print pages: 296-304

This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of

the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book. Page 2 of 15 According to social constructionists, what counts as crime varies depending on who is

defining it: “There are no purely objective definitions; all definitions are value laden and biased

to some degree,” and what is defined as crime by law “is somewhat arbitrary, and represents

a highly selective process” (Barak, 1998, p. 21yf 7 K L V V R F L D O F R Q V W U X F W L R Q L V W F K D O O H Q J H W R W K e

fact of crime as defined by law is rooted in a history of critical theory.

is a theoretical position that cuts across a number of disciplinary and

interdisciplinary fields, including sociology, psychology, psychotherapy, women's studies,

queer studies, the history and philosophy of science, narrative philosophy, and literary theory,

among others. As Stam (2001yf Q R W H G V R F L D O F R Q V W U X F W L R Q L V P K D V Q R W R Q O \ S H U P H D W H G P D Q y

fields of study but also has become part of popular culture (for overviews, see Burr, 1995;

Gergen, 1999; Potter, 1996yf $ G Y R F D W H V R I V R F L D O F R Q V W U X F W L R Q L V P D U J X H W K D W W K H V R F L D O Z R U O d

has an existence only, or largely, through humans' routine interaction. By identifying some

features of social life as significant, distinguishing those features from others, and acting as

though they have a real, concrete existence, humans create social reality.

In its extreme form, social constructionism draws on the idealist/nominalist philosophical

tradition that social reality has no independent existence outside the human mind. Humans

interpret the world and make summary representations (images in their mindyf W K D W W K H y

believe reflect an underlying reality; at issue is whether there is any independent objective

existence to the reality that these representations appear to reflect. Most social

constructionists, however, are not total relativists but are more moderate. They believe that

some fundamental reality exists; they also believe that even social constructions, once

created, have a degree of reality in that they recognize that if humans define situations as

real, then they are real in their consequences. Therefore, if we categorize behavior, events,

and experiences as similar, and name or label them in specific ways, they appear before us

as representations of object-like realities with real effects that can be experienced positively or

negatively.

Although we create the realities that shape our social world, and are impacted by the actions

of those who put energy into sustaining them as realities, we are also capable of changing

these realities by recognizing our role in their construction. Crime is seen as one such social

reality, one that we collectively construct and, by implication, can collectively deconstruct and

replace with a less harmful reality.

There are different versions of social constructionist theory, depending on the extent to which

theorists attribute independence to reality existing outside of the human mind and whether

this attributed reality is seen a result of personal cognitive meaning creation (

yf R U W K H U H V X O W R I V K D U H G V \ P E R O L F V R F L D O S U R F H V V H V (

yf 7 K H U H D U H D O V R G L I I H U H Q F H V in regard to whether theorists believe that social reality can

be changed depending on how far they believe humans can free themselves from their own

social constructions.

From the social constructionist perspective, is a classification of behavior defined by Copyright © 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc. 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook Page 3 of 15 individuals with the power and authority to make laws that identify some behavior as offensive

and render its perpetrators subject to punishment. In Western societies, legislators and

courts, enforced by state agencies, have the power and authority to define crime and

administer punishment. What behavior they define as crime reflects both their own values and

interests and the collective norms and values of the society, or at least the most vociferous

segments of it.

The extent to which the norms and values of a society represent those of the whole society or

some universal human values is questionable, because what counts as crime in different

societies varies in content, with a few exceptions. However, as anthropologists Alfred Kroeber

and Clyde Kluckhohn (1952yf S R L Q W H G R X W L Q W K H L U V W X G \ R I P D Q \ F X O W X U H V W K H U H G R V H H P W R E e

some universals. Kroeber and Kluckhohn claimed that among its own in-group members, no

culture could be found that accepts (ayf L Q G L V F U L P L Q D W H O \ L Q J V X J J H V W L Q J W K D W D O O V R F L H W L H V Y D O X e

honesty; (byf V W H D O L Q J V X F K W K D W D O O V R F L H W L H V Y D O X H U L J K W V R I S U R S H U W \ R Z Q H U V K L S F \f violence

and suffering, suggesting that all societies value peaceful coexistence; and (dyf L Q F H V W V X F h

that all societies restrict sexual intercourse to nonfamilial adults.

However, what counts as acceptable or unacceptable behavior in these categories varies, not

only culturally and subculturally but also historically. For example, in Western industrial

societies, in spite of its enormous economic cost to victims, perpetrators of corporate and

white-collar crimes were, until the late 20th century, rarely subject to punishment, because

the crimes of business, and white-collar crimes in particular, were not considered “real”

crimes, even though they typically produced multiple victims who each suffered economic

losses of up to 100 times the cost of street offenses (the typical average robbery in the United

States nets $1,200, and the typical bank robbery loss is $4,300, compared with the typical

embezzlement, which is $17,000, and the typical corporate crime, which ranges from $5

million–$300 millionyf : K H U H D V D E D Q N U R E E H U W \ S L F D O O \ U H F H L Y H V D W R \ H D U S U L V R n

sentence, a bank embezzler can receive as little as 5 years' probation. The influence of juries

in deciding whether to indict or convict a person for crime can also reflect local rather than

national values, as in the case of a Texas man who shot to death burglars in his next-door

neighbor's house who was not indicted by the grand jury for homicide.

Moreover, the ability of some interest groups to mobilize mass communications to influence

the values of others through moral crusades targeted toward certain behaviors, such as drug

use, homosexual relations, assisted suicide, smoking in public places, and so on, can

significantly affect what kinds of behavior are defined as acceptable or criminal. This stands in

comparison to the human attempt to create a moral social order in which some behavior is

defined as acceptable and other behavior is defined as unacceptable or deviant, through the

creation of rules that ban some behaviors and subject rule violators to sanctions. Whereas

deviance is taken to be a violation of social norms, crime is seen as a violation of criminal law,

and whereas deviance is behavior perceived as different and negatively evaluated as

threatening and morally offensive, crime is seen as harmful—physically, economically,

socially, and psychologically—resulting in victims who suffer some loss, reduction, and

repression of what they were prior to the offense (Henry & Lanier, 2001; Henry & Milovanovic,

1996yf .

However, like the social reaction to deviance, the criminal justice reaction to crime can result in

labeling effects that amplify the significance of the original law violation. This process can

entrench the delinquent in a career trajectory that leads to greater rather than less

involvement in the offensive behavior, not least because options to engage in nonoffensive

behaviors are closed off, while attributes, qualities, and skills in relation to the law violating Copyright © 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc. 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook Page 4 of 15 behavior are enhanced.

Thus, the social construction of crime, through its amplification by social reaction, can

produce the real consequence of as the offender becomes engulfed in

coping with the stigma of a criminal identity that ultimately might lead to his or her embrace of

that socially constructed identity through identity transformation. No longer are these just

persons who broke the law by, for example, being tempted to shoplift; instead they have

become “shoplifters.” Clearly the significance of the social construction process can be that

more crime, rather than less, is the outcome of the attempts to control the original offensive

behavior.

The actions of moral entrepreneurs to whip up public sentiment through the mass media into

what has been called a about certain offenses is capable of producing the

appearance of “crime waves” and can demonize certain categories of people. Social

constructionists have focused on the practices of criminal justice agencies and moral

entrepreneurs in creating moral panics through claims about the threats posed by some

groups to the population as a whole.

A consequence of the social construction of crime and the creation of moral panics is that a

society's crime rate, in particular increases in certain types of crimes, can be viewed less as a

consequence of a real increase in crime and more the effect of the amplification of a problem

through its public discussion in the media. Furthermore, it can reflect increased public

awareness of behaviors that are then defined as problematic, resulting in more reports of

crimes to the police and more arrests of alleged offenders by the police. Thus, real rises and

falls in crime may reflect a combination of the following: (ayf D F W X D O L Q F U H D V H V L Q W K H D F W L Y L W \ E \f

the socially constructed fear of its presence, and (cyf D Z L O O L Q J Q H V V R I D X W K R U L W L H V W R U H F O D V V L I y

other activities as potential crimes. Because of crime's socially constructed nature, real trends

in crime are difficult to establish.

The roots of social constructionism can be attributed to nominalist philosophy. Although the

nominalist philosophical tradition can be traced back to the 11th century and can be found in

the 18th-century philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the 19th-century philosophy of Friedrich

Nietzsche, it is Edmund Husserl's 20th-century that laid the

foundation for social constructionist theory. Husserl combined insights from philosophy,

mathematics, and early psychology. He developed a method for suspending, or “bracketing,”

what was taken for granted as objects in the natural attitude (a commonsense, mundane

approach to the worldyf L Q R U G H U W R V H H K R Z W K H V H D U H F R Q V W L W X W H G L Q W K H K X P D Q F R Q V F L R X V Q H V V .

The is the taken-for-granted assumption that objects have material-like

qualities. Husserl's phenomenological inquiry revealed how our acting toward objects as

though they are real constitutes them as real; their apparent material qualities are, in part, a

result of the ways in which we act intentionally toward them as real.

Husserl's transcendental phenomenology was a major influence on the work of sociologist

Alfred Schutz. In his (1932/1967yf 6 F K X W ] L Q W H J U D W H d Copyright © 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc. 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook Page 5 of 15 Husserl's phenomenology with Max Weber's sociology, in particular with Weber's concepts of

interpretive understanding and ideal-type construction, which are generalized types of

behavior. Schutz saw that in their dayto-day mundane existence in the social world, humans

experience both an objective and subjective existence. Humans both take this world for

granted as a reality yet also see it as shared with others intersubjectively, while also

interpreting it differently, depending on their past experience. Because human action is

purposive, based on human interpretation and shaped as a project by past biography and

social position, a socially constructed shared experience by people having different

experiences produces multiple views of social reality, which leads to a position of moral

relativity.

In the 1960s, during a time when Western industrial societies were undergoing significant

social and political change and when protest against establishment institutions was rampant,

from anti–Vietnam war protests to civil rights and women's movement protests, a social

climate emerged that resonated with the intellectual view that social structures and their

institutions need not be what they had always been and that they could be changed. Peter

Berger and Thomas Luckmann's (1966yf F O D V V L F E R R N ,

captured the historical moment of liberation from our self-made social order by building on the

insights of Schutz. In this work, they showed that although society and its institutions appear

to be real, having an independent and object-like existence, its reality is the outcome of a

series of social processes through which humans interactively create institutionalized social

phenomena but in the process lose sight of the fact that they created those phenomena. The

resultant reification leaves the created social world appearing through types and patterns of

behavior as an object-like entity, acting outside and independent of the humans who created

it. Berger and Luckmann said that reification involves three interrelated processes: (1yf

externalization, (2yf R E M H F W L I L F D W L R Q D Q G \f internalization. occurs through

communication whereby people create categories that define and classify the events that they

experience, eventually becoming patterns that are institutionalized, formalized, and codified to

stand objectified apart from those who created them, who then develop “recipe knowledge”

about them and how to relate to them. The process of and explaining the

existence of these object-like social entities serves to further legitimate their independent

existence. The process of occurs when knowledge about these social

institutions and structures is communicated back to members of society, who embody it as

part of their knowledge of social reality. Not only do humans lose sight of their role in the

creation of social reality but, importantly, they also lose sight of their ability to change the

world.

Harold Garfinkel's (1967yf contributed to the development of

social constructionist thinking in that, like Berger and Luckmann, Garfinkel and colleagues,

such as Harvey Sacks, David Sudnow, Don Zimmerman, and Melvin Pollner, focused on how

social order, social institutions, and social structure emerged from shared mundane

interactions among ordinary people in their everyday lives. In defining their world and acting

toward its boundaries through routine practices of interpretation, people create and negotiate

categories of behavior that are deemed acceptable and categories that are unacceptable or

deviant. Exploring the ways or the methods, rather than the shared meaning, by which this

everyday interpretive process produces realities is the contribution made by Copyright © 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc. 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook Page 6 of 15 ethnomethodology. For ethnomethodologists it is the routine practices (called yf W K D t

people use to classify other people as deviants or offenders that are important in considering

what is and what becomes a crime, rather than the content of the activities of people whose

behavior is classified as deviant or criminal.

In studying humans in the process of coconstructing their world through conversation,

language, making distinctions, and taken-for-granted assumptions, ethnomethodologists are

engaged in a form of radical social constructionism (discussed further in a subsequent section

of this chapteryf D O W K R X J K V R P H V F K R O D U V P D L Q W D L Q that the two are theoretically different

(Bogen & Lynch, 1993yf , W L V L P S R U W D Q W W R Q R W H W K D W H W K Q R P H W K R G R O R J L V W V G R Q R W D V V X P H W K e

constructions that they study exist independently of the discourse used by humans

interacting; neither do they exclude their own analysis from the constitutive process.

Whereas ethnomethodologists were concerned with the ways of interpretation was

accomplished through routine practices, Herbert Blumer, a student of social psychologist

George Herbert Mead and influenced by pragmatic philosopher John Dewey's ideas about

human's interaction with the environment, had been working on developing an interactionist

perspective. His (1969yf G H P R Q V W U D W H G W K D W L Q V W H D G R I E H L Q J I L [ H G W o

objective roles, statuses, and structures in an interrelated system, as functionalist theorists

had argued, social meaning was created through interaction and subjective interpretation with

others. Mead, in his 1934 work , showed that human identity was the

outcome of both people's own emergent sense of self, derived from their individualized self-

concept he called the , and an internalized sense of the social self he called the , which

was derived from generalized views that others held of them that they perceived through

“taking the role of the other.” Blumer (1969yf D U J X H G W K D W S H R S O H D F W W R Z D U G R W K H U V D Q G W K e

world around them on the basis of the meaning that they attributed to people, events, and

structures. The meanings were not fixed but negotiated through a social process of symbolic

communication both with one's self and with others, during which items were named or

labeled.

From the interactionist perspective, crime is defined as a social event, involving many players,

actors, and agencies. Thus, crimes can be characterized the following way:

[Crimes] involve not only the actions of individual offenders, but the actions of other

persons as well. In particular, they involve the actions of such persons as victims,

bystanders and witnesses, law enforcement officers, and members of political society

at large. A crime, from this perspective, is a particular set of interactions among

offender(syf F U L P H W D U J H W V \f, agent(syf R I V R F L D O F R Q W U R O D Q G V R F L H W \ * R X O G . O H F N &

Gertz, 1992, p. 4yf

During this same period, there emerged a perspective on deviance, later applied to crime, that

drew on these concepts of the social process of meaning construction through interaction and

the routine ways these were accomplished. The fundamental idea was that what became

designated as crime and deviance was, as Howard Becker (1963yf D U J X H G Q R W D T X D O L W \ R I D n

act a person commits but a quality of the reaction of the audience who interprets it as deviant

or not. In other words, deviance was not just the result of actions by a human actor; it

4.act positively or negatively, labeling it good or bad. Labeling theorists argued that whether an

issue becomes a public harm and/or ultimately a crime depends on a group's ability to turn

private concerns into public issues or their skills at moral entrepreneurship (Becker, 1963yf .

Creating a public harm from a private issue involves identifying and signifying offensive

behavior and then attempting to influence legislators to ban it officially. Becker argued that

behavior that is unacceptable in society depends on what people first label unacceptable and

whether they can successfully apply the label to those designated as offenders. For example,

prior to the 1930s, smoking marijuana in the United States was generally acceptable.

Intensive government agency efforts, in particular by the federal Bureau of Narcotics,

demonized marijuana smokers as “dope fiends,” a campaign that culminated in the passage

of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. As a result, marijuana smoking was labeled unacceptable

and illegal, and those who engaged in it were stigmatized as outsiders.

Edwin Lemert (1967yf P D G H D G L V W L Q F W L R Q E H W Z H H Q and ,

arguing that many people engage in minor rule violations, but only some of those people are

selected to be labeled as “problems.” When this occurs repeatedly, people may internalize the

definitions that others have of them and undergo an identity transformation, coming to view

themselves as deviants. Lemert and others, such as Erving Goffman (1963yf D U J X H G W K D W W K e

result of this labeling could be secondary deviance, such that people who were stigmatized

by the original label now act deviant because this is part of their deviant identity.

In this sense then, deviance—and, ultimately, crime—is a social construction, first because of

the original process of labeling people and second as a result of the amplification of those

people's deviant behavior and the interactive effects of others' actions toward them. People

become deviant or criminal as a result of the iterative process between their own actions and

the reactions of others to them.

As precursors to social constructionist thought, the ideas discussed in the preceding sections

formed into a theoretical perspective that some consider transcendent as a perspective across

disciplines, in particular of sociology, psychology, psychotherapy, and feminism. Ten core

elements have been identified as being more or less shared by scholars who take a social

constructionist perspective (Henry, 2007yf :

Because of the way it is negotiated and created, “truth” about the social world or social

categories in it, such as crime, should be challenged and seen as “truth claims” rather

than as having any real or concrete status. Concepts such as what the real crime rate

is, trends in crime, and who commits crime and why are claims about the truth rather

than facts about reality.

Collective claims by groups about understanding social phenomena in the same ways,

such as common views about what counts as crime or justice, should not be seen as

evidence of an underlying reality; for example, if terrorism is a crime, then why do many

nations think that U.S. foreign policy displays elements of terrorism? Does that mean

that U.S. foreign policy is criminal?

The use of labels to classify social phenomena such as murder, theft, robbery, and

rape need not reflect an underlying reality, even though the outcomes of these actions

can be harmful to the victims; rape may be more an act of violence than a sex act, and

food poisoning caused by systemically unhygienic restaurants may be more an act of

robbery than a street mugging is.

10. across time, space, and cultures. Some examples include smoking, cocaine

distribution, and environmental pollution over time and in different cultures.

Because of the process involved in its production, neither experts nor nonexperts have

a privileged claim to reveal the truth about social phenomena such as crime; for

example, the identification of a suicide or homicide depends on circumstantial evidence

that coroners may know less well than relatives.

All knowledge is the result of social processes that are based on interaction and shared

subjective meaning attached to a situation that are negotiated by the participants.

These participants include, for example, robbers and their victims, as well as

criminologists and their students.

Meaning is produced in an ongoing fashion and gains significance from the people who

are attributing qualities to acts and events, as well as from the occasions when it is

produced, performed, or acted toward. For example, occasional drug users may

become “junkies” not through their use of drugs alone but by the way that others act

toward them, label them, and limit them from normal behavior.

People who produce knowledge, such as criminologists, government statisticians, and

professional practitioners, are no less subject to critique, and their claims are no more

privileged than those of others.

Knowledge production about social phenomena such as crime is a political process,

shaped by concentrated interests that are seeking a social or political outcome;

consider, for example, claims for example that abortion is murder, homosexuality is a

sin, and consumer fraud is a simply a sharp business practice.

Knowledge and meaning about social phenomena such as crime are not fixed but

multiple, variable, and changeable through reconstructing the language and symbolic

process and by altering the discursive methods that accomplish it.

Although it is possible to identify the core themes that social constructionists share, there are

a variety of different approaches to constructionism depending on the extent to which

advocates accept or reject realism as well as the extent to which they subject their own

analysis to a constructivist critique. Gergen (1994yf L Q

, distinguished between the psychological version of constructionism rooted in

Kelly's (1955yf S H U V R Q D O F R Q V W U X F W W K H R U \ Z K L F K L V F R Q F H U Q H G Z L W K K R Z L Q G L Y L G X D O V F R J Q L W L Y H O y

construct their world by making sense of their own experiences of their environment, and the

other view of social constructionism, which is rooted in the sociological interactionist–

phenomenological tradition of the shared construction of meaning shaped by situational and

social context, culture, and history. It is this second, social constructionist approach that has

been adopted by scholars who examine crime and deviance. Within social constructionism

there are three major positions: (1yf U D G L F D O \f contextual, and (3yf S R V W P R G H U Q L V W .

Social constructionists such as Woolgar and Pawluch (1985yf Z K R F R P S O H W H O \ U H M H F W W K H L G H a

of an objective reality, are known variously as “extreme,” “radical,” “strict,” “vulgar,” or “strong”

social constructionists. They see everything as socially constructed and reject the existence of

an independent objective reality. Such perceived reality is seen as nothing more than the

agreed-on assumptions of the specialized community that created the assumptions.

Advocates of the radical version of social construction also reflexively consider their own

theory as a social construction. They believe that people observe the world from different Copyright © 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc. 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook Page 9 of 15 communities and make “truth claims” about constructions of the world but are not able to

objectively verify the existence of the reality they perceive.

Radical constructionists also differ among themselves, with some seeing knowledge

constituted by an individual's mental process as being closed to outside influence. Such

radical individual constructionists see the world as composed of collections of individual

worldviews, or . Other radical constructionists see the world as coconstructed or

coproduced, whereby the social interaction of human agents through discourse—talking,

language, gestures, and other communications—coproduces shared meaning about the

world. This shared meaning depends not on qualities of the individual mind but on continual

construction and reconstruction in the company of others, or . As a result, there is a

relationship between the human agent and the social world such that each constitutes and is

constituted by the other (Henry & Milovanovic, 1996yf .

In contrast, some scholars, such as Spector and Kitsuse (1977/1987yf D Q G % H V W \f, take

what is called a “contextual,” “minimalist,” “moderate,” or “weak” view of social

constructionism, believing that some underlying reality exists and that not everything is a

social construction. They believe that by selecting from, interpreting, and classifying this

underlying reality, humans build social constructions that have different appearances

depending on the social and cultural context. Contextual constructionists accuse radical

constructionists of relativism and nihilism (Best, 1989yf D Q G D F F R U G L Q J W R % H V W \f, the

radicals misunderstand the task of analysis, which is to locate social constructions in real

cultural–structural contexts; to avoid being exclusively reflexive; and to focus on the

substance of issues, evaluating false claims, and even creating new claims. However, they

also acknowledge that any underlying qualities that exist do not define an event, person, or

action; instead, drawing on the symbolic interactionist tradition, they argue that humans do

this through a social process of definition, based on what is relevant to their purposes,

shaped by their past biographical positioning, in particular by social and cultural matrices.

From these social contexts humans come to agree that some categorizations are more valid

than others. In other words, constructions are meaningful only when they are placed in a

particular social and situational context, one that specifies the criteria of definition, relevance,

and classification. As a result, the concern of contextual constructionists is to understand

social problems such as crime and deviance:

[How they] are generated, sustained, taken seriously, and acted upon; and how

certain claims of seriousness are advanced by specific agents and reacted to, or

ignored, by different audiences. Their argument is that [italics added],

conditions do not constitute social problems; what them social problems is

how they are defined and reacted to by various segments of society. (Goode, 1997,

pp. 60–61yf

In contextual constructionists' opinion, to make changes for the better, people need to

examine the generation and sustenance of social phenomena such as crime, describing how

these phenomena are defined, defended, and reacted to. Those who take the contextual

position are able to make judgments about which approach is better able to discern the

nature of the construction process, how far it distorts any underlying reality, the extent of the

discrepancies between objective reality and subjective experience, how realities can appear to

exist and be sustained, and how changes may be made in the process to produce less

harmful constructions. Copyright © 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc. 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook Page 10 of 15 Although this difference between radical and contextual constructionists is important insofar

as it allows contextualists to use empirical evidence to support their claims that others are

making fallacious claims (thus privileging their method of claims-makingyf F R P P H Q W D W R U V K D Y e

argued that there is neither one constructionism nor many, but a cluster of core themes (as

identified earlieryf H Q J D J H G L Q G L I I H U H Q W O \ G H S H Q G L Q J R Q W K H D X W K R U V

D L P V D Q G L Q W H Q W , Q R W K H r

words, social constructionism is itself seen as a politically framed claims-making process.

In both the sociological and psychological literature, social constructionism resonates with

postmodernism, discourse analysis, and narrative theory, in particular with the affirmative or

reconstructive offshoots of postmodernism, such as constitutive theory in criminology with its

emphasis on “replacement discourse” (Henry & Milovanovic, 1996yf .

Postmodernism involves a process of deconstruction of the truth claims of others, which is

designed to expose their assumptions and their arbitrariness to prevent closure and certainty.

It challenges all power and authority that is based on claims to superior or privileged

knowledge. The deconstructive critique is designed to resurrect and celebrate silenced voices

of the marginalized to reveal the presence of multiple realities, voices, and worlds as part of a

multiplicity of resistances to the hegemony of others' claims to truth.

Affirmative postmodernism is based on the assumptions of social constructionism in that

reconstruction is also possible through replacement discourse (Henry & Milovanovic, 1996yf .

Such postmodernist constructionism believes that viewing a socially constructed world

through deconstruction affords the possibility of reconstructing that world. Interestingly, this

perspective has developed in applied disciplines such as psychotherapy (Parry & Doan, 1994;

Rosen & Kuehlwein, 1996yf D Q G F U L P L Q R O R J \ + H Q U \ 0 L O R Y D Q R Y L F \f, where some

form of intervention has been deemed necessary to transform the present harmful social

constructions. Indeed, in criminology, Henry and Milovanovic's (1996, 1999yf

seeks to deconstruct harmful discourses of domination through the reconstructive process of

, not least by actively engaging the mass media's construction of what

constitutes crime and harm and what counts as the criminal justice system's response.

Postmodernist constructionism emphasizes contingency rather than certainty (Butler, 1992yf ,

and it takes into account the reflexivity issue raised by ethnomethodology. As Kegan (1994yf

wrote, what emerges is “a theory that is mindful of the tendency of any intellectual system to

reify itself” and instead “to assume its incompleteness and to seek out contradiction by which

to nourish the ongoing process of its reconstruction” (pp. 329–330yf ) R U 5 R V H Q \f,

“Reconstructive postmodernism goes beyond the differentiation of the anti-modernists' stance

toward the reintegration of modernism into a transformative way of knowing” (p. 42yf 7 K X V ,

postmodernist constructionism is a humanistic form of social science that seeks not only to

reflexively understand the way humans constitute their world and are constituted by it but also

to use that knowledge to help them transform it into a better place.

From the social constructionist perspective, criminal behavior is a joint human enterprise

between actors and audiences. Crime and deviance are created by human agents making

distinctions, perceiving differences, engaging in behaviors, interpreting their effects, and

passing judgments about the desirability or unacceptability of the behaviors or people labeled Copyright © 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc. 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook Page 11 of 15 as criminal, as though those behaviors and people possessed object-like qualities. Since

Spector and Kitsuse's (1977/1987yf R U L J L Q D O H [ D P L Q D W L R Q R I W K H V R F L D O F R Q V W U X F W L R Q R I V R F L D l

problems, social constructionists have tended to examine the agencies involved in the claims-

making process that produces the panic rather than individuals designated as deviant or their

behavior.

Most constructionist work focuses on how people in authoritative positions create moral panics

around the perceived fear of certain designated behaviors, regardless of whether these

behaviors exist and whether there were persons actually engaged in them. Pavarini (1994yf

pointed out that what becomes defined as crime depends on the power to define and the

power to resist definitions. This in turn depends on who has access to the media and how

skilled moral entrepreneurs are at using such access to their advantage (Pfuhl & Henry,

1993yf .

The original concept of moral panic was used by British sociologist Stanley Cohen (1972yf L n

his book . Cohen described the demonization through the mass

media around the 1960s “mods” and “rockers” teenage rebel groups whose behavior

threatened valued British cultural norms. In

, Erich Goode and Norman Ben-Yehuda (1994yf D U J X H G W K D W P R U D O S D Q L F V D U H V R F L H W D l

reactions to perceived threat characterized by (ayf Y R O D W L O L W \ V H H Q L Q W K H L U V X G G H Q D S S H D U D Q F e

and rapid spread among large sections of the population through the mass media and other

means of communications, followed by a rapid decline in further instances of the problem; (byf

the growth of experts who are claimed to be authorities in discerning cases of the said feared

behavior; (cyf D Q L Q F U H D V H G L G H Q W L I L F D W L R Q R I F D V H V R I W K H E H K D Y L R U W K D W E X L O G L Q W R D Z D Y H G \f

hostility and persecution of the accused as enemies of society; (eyf P H D V X U H P H Q W R I V R F L H W \

concern through attitude surveys; (fyf F R Q V H Q V X V D E R X W W K H V H U L R X V Q H V V R I W K H W K U H D W J \f

disproportional fear relative to investigations of the actual harm; (hyf D E D F N O D V K D J D L Q V W W K e

persecution; and (iyf H [ S R V X U H R I W K H I O D Z V L Q L G H Q W L I \ L Q J W K H S U R E O H P $ Q H [ F H O O H Q W L O O X V W U D W L R Q L s

found in Jeffrey Victor's study of satanic ritualistic child abuse in his book

(1993yf R W K H U V L Q F O X G H 3 K L O L S - H Q N L Q V

V \f book

Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994yf H [ S O D L Q H G W K H V R F L D O F R Q V W U X F W L R Q R I F U L P H D Q G G H Y L D Q F e

through moral panics by one of three models. The proposes that displaced

anxiety from societal stress among members of a population results in a spontaneous moral

panic that scapegoats new categories of criminals and deviants. Here, control agencies reflect

opinion rather than create it. The holds that people in positions of

power, whether government, industry, or religious leaders, are responsible for promoting

moral panic as a diversion from problems whose solution would undermine their own positions

of power. Finally, the sees the creation of moral panics as the

outcome of moral entrepreneurs seeking to gain greater influence over society by defining its

moral domain.

Research conducted by Victor (1998yf I R U H [ D P S O H S R L Q W H G R X W W K D W P R U D O S D Q L F V F O D L P L Q g

crime or deviance need not be based in reality but in imaginary offenders whose existence

gains credibility in the eyes of the public when authorities and those who claim expert

knowledge (in particular, science or medicineyf O H J L W L P L ] H W K H D F F X V D W L R Q V 7 K H V H S D Q L F V D U e

likely to occur when bureaucratic interest, such as competing agencies, are vying for

jurisdiction of authority; when methods of detection result in errors; and as Victor claimed, Copyright © 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc. 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook Page 12 of 15 when there is a symbolic resonance with a perceived threat identified in a prevailing

demonology—which serves as a master cognitive frame that organizes problems, gives

meaning to them, explains them, and offers solutions. A key component of moral panics is the

process of claims-making.

Social constructionists of crime, deviance, and social problems examine how interest groups,

moral entrepreneurs, and social movements create claims about behavior. Claims-making

involves four elements in a process: (1yf D V V H P E O L Q J D Q G G L D J Q R V L Q J F O D L P V D E R X W E H K D Y L R U R r

conditions seen as morally problematic; (2yf S U H V H Q W L Q J W R V L J Q L I L F D Q W D X G L H Q F H V V X F K D V W K e

news media, that the claims are legitimate; (3yf S U R Y L G L Q J D S U R J Q R V L V R I K R Z W R D G G U H V V W K e

problem to bring about a desired outcome by defining strategies, tactics, and policy; and (4yf

contesting counterclaims and mobilizing the support of key groups.

Social constructionist views of crime reveal that there are multiple definitions, each of which

suggests a different set of criteria as constituting the phenomenon.

The starting point of the social constructionist critique is to challenge the veracity of the legal

definition of crime as “an intentional act or omission in violation of criminal law (statutory and

case lawyf F R P P L W W H G Z L W K R X W G H I H Q V H R U M X V W L I L F D W L R Q D Q G V D Q F W L R Q H G E \ W K H V W D W H D V D I H O R Q y

or misdemeanor” (Tappan, 1947, p. 100yf 6 X W K H U O D Q G \f argued that existing crime

categories are constructions that distort the reality of harm. He argued that a strict legal

definition excludes white-collar crime. Others have pointed out that the strict legal definition of

crime also ignores the cultural and historical context of law, such as laws on gambling and

prostitution that vary by state and nation.

Conflict between groups with different and competing interests can result in different

constructions of crime such that groups in positions of power criminalize others' behavior

depending on whether they threaten the interests of the powerful. The result is that powerless

groups are generally the victims of oppressive laws:

Crime is a definition of human conduct created by authorized agents in a politically

organized society…. [It describes] behaviors that conflict with the interests of the

segments of society that have the power to shape public policy. (Quinney, 1970, pp.

15–16yf

Groups in society form around wealth, culture, prestige, status, morality, ethics, religion,

ethnicity, gender, race, ideology, human rights, the right to own guns, and so on. Each group

may fight to dominate others on these issues. Ethnic or cultural conflict is a good example:

What is taken for granted as acceptable behavior by one subculture is defined as criminal by

another, or by mainstream culture.

When the basis of power is wealth, the conflict is considered class based. Actions defined as

crime are rooted in the vast differences of wealth and power associated with class divisions.

Groups that acquire power through political or economic manipulation and exploitation place

legal constraints on those without power. A definition of crime based on economic interests Copyright © 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc. 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook Page 13 of 15 emphasizes that “crime and deviance are the inevitable consequences of fundamental

contradictions within society's economic infrastructure” (Farrell & Swigert, 1988, p. 3yf & U L P H L s

defined as the activities of those who threaten the powerful. Such a view explains why serious

crimes are those of street offenders, whereas those of corporate or white-collar “suite”

offenders are considered less serious. Theorists who challenge the social construction of

crime through laws based on powerful interests argue that behavior that causes harm is

crime (Reiman, 1995yf 0 L F K D O R Z V N L \f for example, argued that we should include as

crime “analogous social injury,” which is harm caused by acts or conditions that are legal. For

example, promoting and selling alcoholic beverages and cigarettes (described as “drug

delivery systems”yf D O W K R X J K O H J D O S U R G X F H F R Q V L G H U D E O H V R F L D O K H D O W K D Q G S V \ F K R O R J L F D l

problems.

Perhaps the most dramatic call from social constructionist – oriented critics to expand the

definition of crime comes from Larry Tifft and Dennis Sullivan (2001yf Z K R D U J X H G W K D W W K e

hierarchical structure and social arrangements of society produce harm that evades the legal

definition. They believe that these acts should be criminalized, which will render criminal

many contemporary legal production and distribution activities. It may also criminalize many of

the criminal justice system's response to crime, because these also produce additional harms.

In general, social constructionists have been criticized depending on how realist or nominalist

their core assumptions are. Pro-realists accuse constructionists of being nihilistic and

unscientific; anti-realists ridicule any attempt at science as just another truth claim that is

using scientific ideology to claim legitimacy for its own political ends (Woolgar & Pawluch,

1985yf $ Q W L U H D O L V W V D U J X H W K D W F O D L P L Q J W R E H D E O H W R R E V H U Y H D Q G G R F X P H Q W W K H Y D U L D E L O L W \ L n

claims about a condition assumes the objectivity (i.e., realityyf R I W K H F R Q G L W L R Q Z L W K R X t

reflexively subjecting one's own analysis to the same questioning. Contextual constructionists

counter that a strict antirealist reading is an illusion that cannot be transcended by developing

new language and discourse, because language is embedded in society (Best, 1995yf % H V t

(1995yf F D O O H G I R U D Z H D N U H D G L Q J R I W K H F R Q V W U X F W L R Q L V W S R V L W L R Q S R L Q W L Q J R X W D \f that it is

actually useful to locate social constructions in real cultural–structural contexts; (byf L W L s

unavoidable and not helpful to be exclusively reflexive; and (cyf W K D W I R F X V L Q J R Q W K H R U \ U D W K H r

than the substance of problems may undermine and paralyze the critical edge of their

constructionist position, inhibit their evaluation of false claims, and even prevent their creation

of new claims.

More broadly, pure or strict social constructionism has been criticized for implying that

problems of crime and deviance are merely fabrications, which is protested by the individuals

suffering their consequences, even though constructionists argue that there are often real

consequences of acting toward constructions as though they are real. The point of

constructionism is that revealing how what is taken to be real can be deconstructed enables

the possibility of it being reconstructed differently through replacement discourse; when social

problems, deviance, and crime are subject to a deconstructionist analysis, they can be

reframed in ways that enable their reproduction to be slowed and even reversed such that

they become differently and less harmfully constituted (Henry & Milovanovic, 1996yf 7 K e

question—indeed, the challenge—for constructionists is how to demonstrate the value of this

kind of analysis in bringing about changes in objective conditions while maintaining that these

conditions are only as real as we allow them to be. The value of social constructionism is that

it seeks not only to understand the way humans constitute their world and are constituted by

it but also to use that knowledge to help them transform the world into a more comfortable Copyright © 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc. 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook Page 14 of 15 place.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/sp.1985.32.3.03a00020

moral panics

crime

deviance

social constructionism

crime and deviance

Social Construction Theory

moral entrepreneurs